BURMA is building a secret nuclear reactor and plutonium extraction facilities with North Korean help, a report from Australia confirms today.
The report, in the usually reliable Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, quotes Thitinan Pongsudhirak, the head of Thailand's Institute of Security and International Studies, as saying: ''It would move Myanmar [Burma] from not just being a pariah state, but a rogue state - that is, one that jeopardises the security and wellbeing of its immediate neighbors.''
Australian National University strategic expert Desmond Ball adds: ''I'd be more worried about a meltdown like Chernobyl - It's the North Korean element which adds the danger to it.''
The report, by the newspaper's Asia-Pacific editor, Hamish McDonald, says that Burma's military junta aims to acquire its first nuclear bomb within five years.
Two key defectors were extensively interviewed separately by Professor Ball and Thailand-based journalist Phil Thornton.
One was an officer with a secret nuclear battalion in the Burmese army who was sent to Moscow for two years' training; the other was a former executive of the leading regime business partner, Htoo Trading, who handled nuclear contracts with Russia and North Korea.
''Their story will ring alarm bells across Asia,'' McDonald writes.
The Herald says their detailed testimony brings into sharp focus the hints emerging recently from other defector accounts and sightings of North Korean delegations that the Burmese junta, under growing pressure to democratise, is seeking a deterrent to any foreign ''regime change''.
At meetings on Phuket last month, the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and regional foreign ministers won promises from the Burmese that they would adhere to UN sanctions on North Korean nuclear and missile exports.
However, Burma's military junta is inclined to make promises it has no intention of keeping, as it plays for time.
Just before the Phuket gathering, a North Korean vessel, the Kang Nam, was tracked by the US Navy on suspicion that it was carrying weapons parts to Burma.
The ship eventually turned back to North Korea.
A verdict in the trial of Burma pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi on what many see as trumped up charges, designed to silence her for the 2010 elections, was postponed on Friday until August 11.
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The report, in the usually reliable Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, quotes Thitinan Pongsudhirak, the head of Thailand's Institute of Security and International Studies, as saying: ''It would move Myanmar [Burma] from not just being a pariah state, but a rogue state - that is, one that jeopardises the security and wellbeing of its immediate neighbors.''
Australian National University strategic expert Desmond Ball adds: ''I'd be more worried about a meltdown like Chernobyl - It's the North Korean element which adds the danger to it.''
The report, by the newspaper's Asia-Pacific editor, Hamish McDonald, says that Burma's military junta aims to acquire its first nuclear bomb within five years.
Two key defectors were extensively interviewed separately by Professor Ball and Thailand-based journalist Phil Thornton.
One was an officer with a secret nuclear battalion in the Burmese army who was sent to Moscow for two years' training; the other was a former executive of the leading regime business partner, Htoo Trading, who handled nuclear contracts with Russia and North Korea.
''Their story will ring alarm bells across Asia,'' McDonald writes.
The Herald says their detailed testimony brings into sharp focus the hints emerging recently from other defector accounts and sightings of North Korean delegations that the Burmese junta, under growing pressure to democratise, is seeking a deterrent to any foreign ''regime change''.
At meetings on Phuket last month, the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and regional foreign ministers won promises from the Burmese that they would adhere to UN sanctions on North Korean nuclear and missile exports.
However, Burma's military junta is inclined to make promises it has no intention of keeping, as it plays for time.
Just before the Phuket gathering, a North Korean vessel, the Kang Nam, was tracked by the US Navy on suspicion that it was carrying weapons parts to Burma.
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A verdict in the trial of Burma pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi on what many see as trumped up charges, designed to silence her for the 2010 elections, was postponed on Friday until August 11.
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